Contents
- 1. What is your goal?
- 2. Why do you need this skill?
- 3. When do you want to reach your goal? What are the resources and limitations?
- 4. With whom and from whom do you want to study?
- How to choose a really useful course
- Search for information about courses on the website and in social networks
- What can alert
- How to create an effective educational environment around you in conditions of self-isolation
Another week of quarantine passes, dissatisfaction is replaced by a desire to spend time usefully. How to build online learning in the context of a variety of content – Nadezhda Makova, managing partner of T&P, figured out
About the Author: Nadezhda Makova, CEO and Managing Partner of the Theories and Practices project.
In this situation, many drew attention to the possibility of self-education. The market immediately responded to the request: educational resources opened up free access to their online courses. At the same time, 90% of the content is archival video lectures without live dialogue. One of our studies showed that people need live formats with real-time speakers, group work and feedback. This is the only way to get truly applicable and useful knowledge and tools from online learning.
Online learning has both pros and cons. But we live in a new reality, and now even ardent opponents of online will have to pay attention to it. With all the variety of offers, you need to understand: quantity is not equal to quality.
Before choosing an online course, answer the following questions:
1. What is your goal?
In online learning, this comes to the fore.
According to experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, only 3-5% of students of mass open distance courses complete them completely.
Therefore, motivation and self-discipline are exactly what will help you not to stop at the first lecture and reach the end.
Learning new things or spending time usefully is not a goal or motivation. It is important to be very clear about your expectations from the training. For example, “I want to speak English at C1 level” or “become a strong speaker, speak fluently in front of an audience of over 500 people.”
2. Why do you need this skill?
Even if the educational goal sounds good, test it for applicability. If you realize that neither in work nor in your personal life, English, especially at such a high level, is most likely not useful to you, you should consider whether to spend resources. Similarly with public speaking: perhaps you just succumbed to the general trend “without this now nowhere”, but in practice you will not have the opportunity to speak in front of such a large audience. Motivation, backed up by specific “why” plans, will grow faster.
3. When do you want to reach your goal? What are the resources and limitations?
For example, the largest international forum, which will be held at the end of the year, can become the very temporary landmark for which you need to thoroughly prepare: raise your English to C1 level or get used to a large crowd of people in the hall. The limitation may be the unwillingness to leave the comfort zone during the lesson. – in the case of public speaking, there can be many such situations during training and performing non-standard tasks in front of other course participants. We can also talk about financial resources – the cost of some online courses, alas, sometimes does not fit into the budget.
4. With whom and from whom do you want to study?
Pay attention to psychological resources, values and attitudes that can help or, conversely, act as an obstacle to learning. They can be the rules and format of training (individual or in a group), personal preferences for who will be your teacher and fellow students.
In the online environment, when it comes to synchronous “live” formats, psychological barriers are triggered. Communicating with people via video chat (and sometimes just by voice) can be difficult. Here the mastery of the leader of the lesson is important, which should organize it in such a way that, using the available tools, break “through the screen” and help the participants feel free.
How to choose a really useful course
The quality of a program can be determined by examining the following parameters:
- Teacher profile.
- Content
- Course technical support.
- Curriculum.
- Feedback and progress tracking.
- Feedback from participants.
- Economic feasibility of training.
- All information can be viewed on the course pages, with the exception of reviews: on the official website, they can be biased or even fake, and on social networks, impartial comments are sometimes erased. It is better to look at the impressions of trained students in thematic groups or communities.
- Study a brief description of the course, its goals and objectives, as well as the basic knowledge and skills required of students. This is where the “docking” of your goals and what the course offers should happen.
- Pay attention to the convenience of the platform or service, how clear everything is in use, whether it is possible to record lessons, communicate with classmates and teachers.
- Check out the formats and tools for tracking and evaluating your progress to see if they match the immersion you need.
- Check the requirements and skills for practitioners in the field or profession you plan to master: in some industries (marketing, technology, communications, change management), new tools are created literally on a weekly basis, and industry principles can change several times a year. Compare this with the tools and skills that the school or online platform promises to teach after completing the program.
What can alert
- Outdated archival video lectures.
- Irrelevant practical experience of the teacher in the subject/skill that he helps to get.
- Lack of feedback from the teacher and ways of communication with classmates.
- Irrelevant curriculum.
- No progress tracking.
- Bad reviews in thematic groups or communities.
- Discrepancy between the price and the expected benefit from the exchange rate.
How to create an effective educational environment around you in conditions of self-isolation
The forced confinement of people in their homes showed how important socialization, live communication, feedback and rallying are.
Here are some tips that I took from my practice that can help you in self-isolation:
What online learning formats can develop “soft skills”
Recently, the issue of training flexible and communication skills, which are so in demand today, has been relevant. We are talking about effective teamwork, competent feedback, developing emotional intelligence, negotiating, etc. How realistic is it to learn this online? It should be understood that there is no magic pill here. Live training and empathy are needed.
Online learning has come a long way. Modern technologies make it possible to conduct interactive live formats, and these are not only traditional webinars, but also full-fledged workshops. It is these live formats or combined courses in the flipped classroom format that will work best for acquiring many communication skills, where the reaction of fellow students and the teacher is important and the closest possible approximation to a live, offline format. They work best with a small group where the expert practitioner can organize group and individual exercises, on which they will then provide feedback.
The only true luxury is the luxury of human interaction. This is more relevant than ever to online learning. Today, when such human qualities as empathy, the ability to communicate, give feedback, share knowledge and skills, and be able to motivate your employees and colleagues come to the fore, it is necessary to create an environment in online learning where the person and his personal comfort will be at the center. .
Remember
To choose a useful course and complete it, you need to:
Subscribe and follow us on Yandex.Zen — technology, innovation, economics, education and sharing in one channel.